My First Case

For the past month, I have been working in the FAFG lab as the assistant to a forensic anthropologist, which has been an educative and fascinating experience. The two of us are responsible for reviewing a case of 74 individuals that were exhumed from an old military based in the province of Baja Verapaz. Nearly all of the skeletons are males between 15 and 45 years old. They were each dumped into a five-story deep well on the base, which made for a very difficult excavation carried out by the forensic archaeology team.

My job with this case is to place each skeleton in anatomical position, and start the process of reviewing the bones for determination of the individual’s age and signs of trauma. My colleague is responsible for the final determination of these, but throughout the course of the project I’ve taken on increasing responsibility. I am getting much more accurate at determining the age of death (using the pubic symphysis, rib ends and other skeletal elements), and at distinguishing between perimortem trauma (at or around the time of death) and postmortem trauma (any factor that affects the body after death). I find this to be especially difficult when it comes to ribs, which are brittle and often fracture as the body decomposes (postmortem trauma). In this case, almost all of the individuals exhibit perimortem blunt force fractures, including many broken ribs, from the fall into the well.

I have been surprisingly unaffected by the gritty nature of the work. I expected the experience to be more emotionally challenging than it has been to date, which I think this has to do mostly with two things: 1) arriving prepared. From past studies and experiences in Guatemala, mostly with Professor Anita Isaacs at Haverford, I learned about the country’s conflict, and even read witness testimony from the region of my current case. I knew what to expect when I arrived at the FAFG; and 2) lack of context in the laboratory setting. The social anthropologists and the archaeologists of the FAFG go out into the field to hear the stories of the disappeared, stand by the graves with the families, and bear witness to the positions that the bodies were in when they landed at the bottom of the grave. But in the lab setting, we get the “clean” version – the skeletons arrive in boxes and we lay them out on tables before examining the details and writing a report.

Moreover, it gets easier with time. One of the first cases that my colleague and I reviewed was that of a young man, about my age, whose skeleton exhibited multiple signs of trauma. We discovered that he was struck at least three times on the neck and back with a sharp-edged weapon – likely a machete – and that the attacker had to have come at him from the right side of his body. Somewhat strangely, he did not exhibit visible defense wounds on his hands or wrists, a possible indication that his hands were tied at the time of the attack.

There was a moment of silence after we decided this, in which time I thought about the unfortunate final moments of this young war victim. Then my colleague looked up from the sliced vertebra in his hand and said “que bonito” (“how pretty”). I was taken aback by this comment, which came from a purely scientific standpoint. But I quickly snapped back into forensic mode – “sí, que bonito,” I said. And it’s true, the human skeleton is beautiful, and being able to discern slight marks in it that determine the difference between life and death is indeed astonishing.

Some 40 individuals later, I found myself saying the same thing when we were able to determine the sequence of two gun shot wounds and a blunt-force injury to someone’s skull.

Perspectives on Death

Before arriving in Guatemala, I made the transition from the world of human rights advocacy to that of forensic science. Although I majored in anthropology during my time at Haverford College (graduating in 2004), the subfield of forensic anthropology is not often taught at the undergraduate level. Over the past year I have gained more experience in the field through coursework and an internship with Dr. Douglas Ubelaker at the Smithsonian Institution, and a month of training at Mercyhurst College. Prior to that, I spent two and half years working in human rights advocacy at the Latin America Working Group. The move from that field to forensics was marked largely by the difference I saw in perspectives on death.

People in the human rights field tend to be highly sensitive to death. Successful human rights advocacy involves drawing attention to wrongful death and gross mistreatment of individuals, and is often accomplished by conveying an appalled reaction to such acts. In most senses, this response is appropriate; what is more serious than death?

Yet in the forensic field, death is a given. Every case that a forensic specialist takes on involves a person that has died. Dark senses of humor abound in this profession, and initially during my transition I was surprised by the lack of emotional response conveyed by forensic anthropologists when in the face of traumatic death. But I am coming to understand the medical and scientific lens that one must look through in order to successfully complete forensic work, which is important on both a personal and professional level. A sense of humor helps too, even if a dark one!

Despite their differences, both human rights advocates and forensic professionals have the common goal of obtaining justice and dignity for the deceased, who can no longer speak for themselves. It is difficult for me, however, to have to choose between these two fields. Having now completed three weeks with the FAFG in Guatemala, I couldn’t be happier to be part of an organization whose work is both scientific in nature and dedicated to human rights and justice. The case that I am currently working on, for example, involves the skeletal analysis of 74 people who were killed on a Guatemalan military base during the time of the war. In my next entry I will discuss the (sometimes gory!) details of this project.

Welcome!

This blog is meant to be a space for me to relay stories from the grave(site) for those would like to follow along as I practice forensic anthropology in Guatemala under a Fulbright fellowship.

So what exactly is forensic anthropology? Think: bones. Anthropology is the study of the human condition, including physical remnants of human life and culture. Forensics refers to efforts that contribute to legal investigations, although it is most commonly associated with figuring out how someone died. Thus, forensic anthropologists have the unique role of excavating human remains and providing a detailed analysis of the bones for identification of victims and associated legal investigations.

Last week I arrived in Guatemala to spend ten months working with the Guatemala Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG, for its Spanish acronym). The Foundation is a well-recognized forensic institution dedicated to the monumental task of identifying victims of the country’s 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996. More than 200,000 people were killed in the conflict and over 50,000 were “disappeared.” Many of those who lost their lives were indigenous Mayan.

For at least the first few months of my time with the FAFG, I will be assisting in laboratory analysis of human remains. Using clues from different bones of the body, we can create biological profiles that consist of an individual’s sex, height, and approximate age. We then look for evidence of trauma on the skeleton. Keen examination of bone trauma perimortem – at or around the time of death – can distinguish between various types of injury that may have been the cause of death, such as sharp trauma induced by a knife or machete, gun shot wounds, or blunt trauma that would result from bludgeoning.

Many people wonder why it matters that we – quite literally – dig up the past. The short answer, on which I will into go more detail in the future, is threefold: the need for closure for families of the deceased, exposure of the truth of what took place in Guatemala, and justice and reconciliation for a war-torn society. Forensic anthropology, when practiced in such a context, is a science in the service of human rights.